DC Comics 2018
Written by Scott Snyder & Aaron Gillispie
Pencilled by Andy Kubert
Inked by Klaus Janson
Coloured by Brad Anderson
Lettered by Deron Bennett
Challengers Mountain has returned to the DC Universe and chosen a new team of explorers! Five misfit strangers are given a second chance at life, but only if they obey the orders of the mysterious Professor and execute deadly missions in the most unexplored corners of the multiverse! And if the new Challengers of the Unknown fail…it will be more than just their own lives that hang in the balance!
Now that I have had time to think about it it’s time to write the review for this issue. Now I understand that with Scott he’s going to much around a bit with a tried and true franchise to give it his own modern take on it. In this instance it would seem now that Challengers Mountain is now some kind of sentient structure who throughout history has chosen a team when the world needs them most to well challenge the unknown and save the world nee reality. I am not sure that is going to sit well with me and taking the team from a more innocent nature to this much darker place for me wasn’t necessary and it’s high time that DC stopped all the dark angst it puts in every book.
On the other hand I have to admit that the idea of a rotating cast of characters that are brought into the fold as needed. Granted Prof being someone who doesn’t seem quite human any more and possessing shades of the Joker and Apocalypse blended into something that well would’ve been unique but now feels to patterned down into the Batman universe. The homage to the previous team, the most well known among them naturally, is nicely done and tying the past and present together was well done.
The demonstration that was Spyral or Agent Brink was necessary and so over the top that it felt unnecessarily grotesque. While I so want to like this and I'll give it the first arc out of fairness to what I may be quibbling over now it still feels so much darker than I feel it has to be. In order to be chosen for the team is death the only way that can happen? It also stretches what I feel was the essence of the original series, the family, friends and compatriots aspect and makes them teammates now and while each was chosen for specific skill sets and reasons it no longer has the same feel at it’s core.
Andy, Klaus and Brad do some really nice work on the interiors here. The way that page layouts are utilised is nice and to see the angles and perspective in the panels does show off Andy’s eye for storytelling. While there are plenty of backgrounds in play here I would still like to see more of the utilised. There really is some great storytelling going on with the artwork and while I would have loved to see a familiar villain right off the bat here’s hoping this can become an entity of what was instead of that Mishegas that was Dark Metal.
Now if that’s Multi-Man in the opening and General Tolek in the closing I will be much more excited by what’s to come. In the meantime there are a few interesting characters who have some great potential in the mix. I will wait to see how this goes but I don’t like the mountain having a sentient aspect or that the Prof looks like he does. Still we’ll give it the shot it deserves and see how much of the unknown this group will have to face.